It’s not often that a confirmation hearing begins with the suspense surrounding John Brennan’s appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday. Brennan is President Barack Obama’s trusted White House counter terrorism advisor and his nominee to lead the CIA; more colloquially, he is the chief architect and overseer of the Obama era war against al-Qaeda. And while anticipation may have run high last week during Chuck Hagel’s grilling over Iran and Israel, that was nothing compared to the talk that Brennan’s turn in the spotlight will be the setting for an unforgettable debate about life and death, the difference between legal killing and murder, with a rousing discussion of torture to boot.

Why such tension? Recent disclosures timed for Brennan’s hearing have told us little that’s new about Obama’s prosecution of the war on terror. A leaked Justice Department white paper outlining the legal basis for killing an American citizen working with al-Qaeda made for fascinating reading. But it didn’t say much that wasn’t already known about how this White House (and the one before it, for that matter) views its power to hunt and kill terrorists. The fact that drone strikes may instill dangerous anti-Americanism across the Muslim world — potentially spawning more terrorists than they kill — is getting renewed attention. But it’s a years-old debate. And that New York Timesdisclosure about a drone base in Saudi Arabia that several news outlets had agreed to keep secret? The base had been previously reported. And if you don’t know that the Saudis are our most important Arab allies in the war against al-Qaeda, you’re not paying attention.

There’s no reason why John Brennan’s CIA confirmation hearing has to be the place to hash out these questions. Congress has been free to do so at anytime. But Congress has also shown virtually no appetite under Obama for interfering with his prosecution of the anti-terror war: Republicans like a merciless drone campaign, even if it requires some tricky legal reasoning. Democrats want to support their president (and who can complain about a guy who got bin Laden?). No wonder the 2012 campaign featured no serious discussion of our reliance on drones or whether any other limits should be imposed on the ongoing fight against al-Qaeda.

It is true that some members of Congress are growing impatient with the drone war. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, has been demanding since the 2011 killing of the American-born al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki to know how Obama justified the execution-by-drone of an American citizen. But Wyden’s testy Jan. 14 letter to Brennan doesn’t even even assert that Obama lacked the authority to kill al-Awlaki. Instead, Wyden insisted that withholding those legal opinions “represents an alarming and indefensible assertion of executive prerogative” and demanded to see them. (On Wednesday the White House agreed to show its legal memos, which are more detailed than the leaked DOJ paper to the Intelligence Committee, in advance of the hearing.)

While Wyden and others may well have some tart words for Brennan, the hearing is unlikely to become a pile-on. As Micah Zenko at the Council on Foreign Relations notes, the Intelligence Committee’s Democratic chairwoman, Senator Diane Feinstein of California, is a national security hawk and defender of executive authority. It is the case however that Feinstein is notably less-hard line on another key issue: torture. She recently oversaw the completion of a classified 6,000 page committee report on the Bush-era CIA’s use of torture, which she has suggested contains a damning verdict. Might she and other Democrats grill Brennan on the topic? Brennan was, after all, reportedlyaware of the CIA’s torture activities when he was a senior agency official in the mid-00s, although he has since disavowed the practice. But as with drones, a kind of undeclared truce has prevailed on the question. Obama banned torture upon taking office, and declined to hold Bush officials accountable for “enhanced interrogation.” Democrats haven’t seriously challenged him. And while many Republicans still believe that certain forms of torture—or practices they don’t feel should be defined as torture—are acceptable, they haven’t pressed the issue, either. (This despite the fact that the public is at bestdivided on torture.) At the moment, torture is a settled issue, and neither side has much to gain by pressing Obama’s nominee on the question.

There are plenty of other important questions that can be put to a CIA nominee. Former agent, and TIME.com intelligence columnist, Bob Baer’s suggestions range from China to North Korea to—oh, yeah!—good old-fashioned intelligence collection. But bear in mind that on many of these subjects—and on drones above all—Brennan will likely duck behind a shield of classification. There’s a reason the Senate Intelligence Committee rarely holds hearings in an open public session, after all.

“Senators may get political points for asking about the CIA’s drone program, but they sure aren’t going to get answers,” says Amy Zegart, a former national security council staffer and a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. “If I were a gambling woman, I’d bet big money on the number of times Brennan says, ‘I’m happy to discuss this in closed session.’” The most anticipated confirmation hearing in recent memory may end up being among the least satisfying.

in watching this on MSNBC it seems like a lot of grand standing by Republicans trying to play gotcha politics rater than interviewning the man for the job that he has done for a while in part. vs the supposed handlers from Congress committee..

"Congress has also shown virtually no appetite under Obama for
interfering with his prosecution of the anti-terror war: Republicans
like a merciless drone campaign, even if it requires some tricky legal
reasoning. Democrats want to support their president (and who can
complain about a guy who got bin Laden?)."

You left out a reason: the American people have no stomach for more American boots-on-the-ground in godforsaken Middle-Eastern countries. Unmanned attack vehicles or no-casualty special operations are all we've got left for the "prosecution of the anti-terror war."

Yeah I guess cold blooded murder is nothing for Democrats. Or leaks of national security as long as it fits and helps the Obama campaign. Or that a Political appointee is being put in charge of the CIA. Nothing wrong here. Just another coverup.

No drama here. Just some minor stuff about drone attacks, illegal wiretapping, kidnapping, rendition, indefinite detention, torture, military trials, Guantanamo Bay and some memos posing as legal reasoning. Apparently we don't really want to know any of the details about any of this stuff because the media tells us so. Should be a cake walk.

Is anyone besides me less concerned about the way we are using drones than we are about torture? I know there's a lot of equivalency being thrown around, but I see them very differently. We have always killed people in war, many thousands. Imagine if we tortured as many people as we kill - would we see this as a good thing because they were still alive?

And as for not giving due process. Police kill suspects sometimes without due process - when the danger they present is imminent, and it doesn't appear that we'd be able to arrest them.

My questions about the drone program involve whether there is adequate oversight, whether we should require court approval, how we define "immanent," whether we are extending this practice to those beyond Al Qaeda - operational questions, in other words, not questions about the theoretical use of drones.

@shepherdwong Oops. That should be a big "like". Our alternatives are small. The CIA operates under the table and neither Democrats nor Republicans want to push transparency too far. Drones? Cheney's a big supporter of more power to the Executive so I'm eagerly awaiting his daughter's comments on drones.

@kathy Yep. Hard to see the qualitative difference between firing a Hellfire from a remote-controlled drone and dropping a JDAM from an F-15 from 15,000 feet in the middle of the night, except the drone attack might be more precise and cause less collateral damage. How soon we forget that we killed tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children without the use of unmanned aircraft.